If there is wiggle room between reform and abolishment, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries are not interested in seeking it. During an appearance on “Meet the Press” last Sunday, Jeffries made his opposition to Medicare for All emphatically clear, thereby negating the legislation proposed by the Democratic Socialists of America.
In effect, he walked back the single-payer health initiative he once sponsored, indicating that Medicare for All is “not legislation that I currently am sponsoring or that I support.”
Jeffries also took exception to the call to abolish ICE, insisting that Democrats were more interested in “dramatically reforming” the agency. Interestingly, DNC members had backed a resolution a day before to dissolve ICE.
We are now back to our premise about the possibility of finding a reasonable solution between those who champion reform and those who demand abolishment of particularly burning issues.
The same problem has been a push-and-pull among differing groups about defunding the police. We recall the late Dr. Johanna Fernández, who declared that it was not possible to reform the police. However, have the opposing parties really spent time trying to find room for agreement or compromise on the gap that separates them on the question?
Some aspects of transformative justice and the plans put forth by Jennifer Jones Austin, the newly appointed chair of the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board (CCRB), may provide some solutions to fixing a broken police system rather than completely destroying it. In that same vein, some thought must also be given to the idea of a stronger, more robust Affordable Care Act that might appease those demanding Medicare for All. As can be seen, we have no answer to this longstanding divide between abolishing a system or reforming it when it comes to protecting, insuring, or imprisoning people, but we would like to see more serious and sustained discussions of these matters.
